This past Friday and Saturday, I attended the Full Focus Achieve 2018 Conference in Nashville, TN with Michael Hyatt & Company. I have been positively inspired by Michael Hyatt for several years now having chanced upon his podcast – This is Your Life while out for a run. While I am blessed to have so many training and development options at P&G, I find it equally stimulating to get beyond our walls and learn from someone in another sphere. In this case, I was surrounded by other like-minded people who were pursuing their dreams and making every day count.
Believe it or not, the conference was focused on shifting from digital to analog planners – I now have a beautiful bound quarterly planner that I’ve started using this weekend.
I recall with fondness my Franklin Planner; back then my days seemed in such control! I had my A,B & C priorities and numbered them each according to their importance and urgency. I delighted in each checkmark signaling that I had made something happen. I also recall my switch to digital back in the days when the Palm Pilot was breaking technology. Now of course, my I-Phone is my life, holding precious pictures of my children along with somewhat less precious but indispensable calendar, email, Evernote digital brain, Nozbe task manager, and numerous running aps.
I claim to be an early adopter of just about anything that will help me be more focused and productive. But I still keep a note book and jot down thoughts from meetings and readings. I can recall the place on a page where I’ve written something, where I was sitting, the smell of the place. Guess that confirms that I am a visual learner on the VARK model! Lately, the need to produce is intense and the stakes seem higher. My brain seems to ping from issue to opportunity; while I am still accomplishing quite a lot, sometimes I feel a bit dizzy. So, when I heard of this Return to the Future approach – an analog planner by the Guru of Productivity, I wondered: could that shift from my day on 2 pages to my life on a 2×3″ screen finally be catching up on me?
Depending on who funded the study, there are competing views on whether writing or typing provide better recall. Some say typing decreases comprehension because the speed at which you can transcribe what you are hearing into text prevents you from analyzing what is being said. The faster you type, the less you are thinking, and therefore are not stimulating the part of your brain that provides recall. By taking time to write down my activities of the day, I can recommit to the meetings I choose to attend and identify the priority actions that will enable me to do “the Thing” that is most important versus all “the Things” I do that make up my busy day. You could call attention to “the Things” procrastinating but at the time, they seemed important. At the end of many a day, it seems my ‘Dog Brain” was at work – ‘squirrel!’ – because when I think about what more I needed to do to really move the peanut, I realize I could have made better choices.
So, I’m all in for the next 90 days… we’ll see if this makes a difference! I’ll keep you posted.
VestaProject 